The faith of Jimmy Carter

“The totality of my teaching presents a view of a lay person. I’m not a theologian,” he said in an interview. “I’m extracting real messages from the Bible or from Christian faith that apply to daily existence and that’s applicable whether you’re a farmer, a journalist, a lawyer, a teacher or a political office holder.”

In the book, Carter is open about struggles over his own faith. He writes that he felt “despondent and alienated from God” after losing his first bid for Georgia’s governor in 1966, and said his wife Rosalynn went through a rough patch when he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980. But he said he retrenched during those dark times and worked to remind himself of the role religion has played in his life.

“If there is no basis for our faith … then how do we account for the presence of Jesus Christ in hundreds of millions of lives across the globe?” he wrote in the book. “How could Jesus still be alive to me? How could so many hearts be touched and minds stimulated by Jesus to seek ultimate truths about life and the world around us?”